Making safe sex sexy

Porn stars and real life boyfriends Steve Cruz and Bruno Bond, in Australia for World AIDS Day, are part of a new breed of adult performers bringing a sense of social conscience to the industry.

“I think it is important that we’re here during World AIDS Day,” Cruz told Southern Star during their Melbourne visit.
“The people who I miss who’ve died from AIDS would want this message to be out there — that prevention is all we really have without a cure.”

The pair both said that, as porn stars, they feel a responsibility to use their position within the gay community for good.

“When I would go to gay pride fairs in San Francisco, the HIV prevention stalls would be small and sad, tucked away down some alley,” Cruz said. “The stalls people flocked to were for Falcon, Titan and Colt — everybody wanted to meet a porn star.

“I thought, wow — if we could just get the porn stars to deliver the message, we could really save some lives.”
Bond, a relative newcomer to porn with only one year of filmmaking under his belt, said the opportunity to deliver safe-sex messages was one of the reasons he got into the industry.

“I was in a long-term relationship for about seven years, and when I got out of the relationship in 2005, I was shocked to find young guys on the scene now don’t seem to use condoms as much,” he said.

“I felt I would have a bigger voice in the community if I was something of a gay celebrity. Of course, that wasn’t my only reason for doing porn,” he grinned, winking at Cruz. “But it was a big part of it.”

Thanks to safe-sex policies at major gay porn studios, the pair don’t encounter unsafe practices in their work lives, but they’ve both had personal experiences they’re keen to share
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“We need to talk more about the pressure to bareback,” Cruz said. “Whenever I’ve come closest to HIV, it’s been when a guy I was dating or a guy I liked asked me to do it ‘just this once’.

“We want to be clear about safe sex, but at the same time, we’ve really tried not to shame or come across as holier-than-thou.
“One, it’s not sexy, and two, we know this is a human discussion — we know people are going to make mistakes, and maybe trust people they shouldn’t. Sometimes good people make questionable choices.”